The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  The Samnite war drew the Roman armies further and further south, as they tried to outflank the large and vigorous Samnite armies. When ten ships under Roman command sailed into the Gulf of Taranto in 282 BC they were attacked by the Greeks of Taras, and the Romans lost half their flotilla; undeterred, they established a garrison in the town of Thourioi (Thurii), which also lay in the Gulf of Taranto, and which had appealed to Rome for help against raids by the inhabitants of the Lucanian hinterland. Taras had not turned against Rome because it feared for its control of the sea, for ten ships were no match for the hundreds Greek maritime cities could mobilize; the real threat was that a Roman presence on land would unravel the Italiote League and set one Greek city in southern Italy against another.24 Fear of Rome led the Tarentines to look across the Adriatic and invite the aid of Pyrrhos of Epeiros; he claimed descent from Achilles, so there were echoes of the Trojan War in his campaign against Rome, which was by now vaunting its foundation by the descendants of the Trojan Aeneas. Whether Pyrrhos saw himself as future master of the Mediterranean, creating a western empire as vast as that his cousin Alexander had briefly brought into being in the East, is doubtful; he may simply have craved the payments the western Greeks were prepared to offer such a formidable mercenary army, organized in phalanxes and equipped with elephants. As the Tarentines feared, south Italian cities opted to join Rome as well as to join Pyrrhos, and as Pyrrhos made headway in Italy some of those cities that had supported Rome now opportunistically changed their mind. Pyrrhos dominated the affairs of southern and central Italy between 280 and 275; his Pyrrhic victories brought him little advantage, and within a few years of his exasperated withdrawal Rome had taken charge of Taras. The Greek cities in southern Italy continued to run their own affairs with an occasional nod in the direction of Rome (such as a special issue of coins showing the goddess Roma).25 The Romans had no desire or capacity to control the towns of the deep south so long as they saw themselves as a land power rooted in Latium. They established a few settlements: Paestum south of Naples, Cosa in Etruria and Ariminum (Rimini) were coastal stations intended to protect lines of communication by land and sea along the shores of Italy, but the emphasis lay on defending the interior, for instance the edges of Samnite country that would be tamed by the new colony of Beneventum (Benevento).26

  The Punic Wars drew Rome out of its Italian shell. Carthage had joined in the war against Pyrrhos, and won a great naval victory in 276 BC, sinking two-thirds of his fleet of over 100 ships.27 The First Punic War was fought in Sicily and Africa, and for the first time extended Roman influence across the open sea; the Second Punic War (dominated by land campaigns) drew the Romans towards Spain, though the main theatre of action was Italy itself, following Hannibal’s invasion by way of the Alps; the brief Third Punic War drew Rome more deeply into African affairs and culminated in the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. What is curious is the lack, at least at the start, of clear Roman intentions. The Romans did not set out to make an end of Carthage; they had ancient treaties with the city and there was no obvious conflict of interest.28 Between the first and second wars there intervened a period of peace during which relations, if not trust, were restored. And yet at the end of the cycle Rome emerged as a Mediterranean power, extending its mastery over not just the ruined site of defeated Carthage but, in the same year, over large tracts of Greece. This is, perhaps, another example of an empire acquired in ‘a fit of absence of mind’. Rome began to construct a large war fleet only when it became obvious that this was essential to the conduct of the First Punic War. Both cities were drawn into a series of conflicts that included the largest naval battles of antiquity and resulted in tens of thousands of casualties on land and sea. Not for nothing have historians compared the outbreak of these wars to the First World War, where a series of relatively small incidents lit a fuse that ignited vast regions.29 Just as the First World War was much more than a conflict between Germany and the Anglo-French alliance, the Punic Wars were rather more than a conflict between Carthage and Rome, for other interests soon emerged: Iberian towns, North African kings, Sardinian chieftains and, during the First Punic War, the Greek cities of Sicily. The armies Hannibal set against Rome included Gallic, Etruscan and Samnite recruits; the fleets Rome sent against the Carthaginians included large numbers of vessels, probably the great majority, supplied by Greek and other allies in central and southern Italy. To term these wars ‘Punic’ is mistakenly to assume that the conflicts were dominated by a continuous history of rivalry to the death between Carthage and Rome.30

  IV

  Ancient historians were astonished by the length, intensity and brutality of the Punic Wars. Polybios, the Greek historian of the rise of Rome, benefited from the patronage of one of the generals in the Punic Wars and opined that the First Punic War was the greatest war ever fought. Its time-span, from 264 to 241 BC, easily outlasted the Trojan War, and the Second Punic War (218–201) was also long and exhausting, leaving in its wake agricultural devastation.31 The war with Carthage originated in quarrels far from Rome, and it was far from clear to either great city that intervention was in their best interests. The crisis began with the seizure of Messana on the tip of Sicily by a group of Campanian mercenaries who had earlier served Agathokles, tyrant of Syracuse, and who were known as the Mamertines, or ‘men of Mars’. They arrived in the 280s and made thorough nuisances of themselves, raiding the towns of eastern Sicily; the Romans became involved because their own Italian campaigns had been proceeding so well that they had reached Rhegion (Reggio), the Greek city directly opposite Messana, which they occupied in 270. So Sicily was within the sights of the Romans; but that is not to say they intended to invade the island. When the new ruler of Syracuse, Hieron, defeated the Mamertines in battle the mercenaries panicked and sent messages both to Rome and to Carthage, asking for military help. Hieron was a power to be reckoned with; he had commercial and diplomatic ties to the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, and, following a great tradition, he not merely patronized the Olympic Games but competed in them.32 As it happened, there was a Carthaginian fleet nearby, in the Lipari islands, and its admiral prevailed on the Mamertines to let him install a Carthaginian garrison in Messana.33

  The Mamertines did not like to be under anyone’s thumb, and now had second thoughts; they turned to Rome, asking for help against the Carthaginians. But the Senate was not easily convinced that Rome should become involved in a conflict beyond the peninsula. Polybios says that many Romans were afraid the Carthaginians would gain complete control of Sicily, and that they would then begin to interfere in Italy itself.34 According to one version, the Senate was unwilling to act, and a popular assembly voted to fight. Even so, this was not a war against Carthage. The Roman general sent to Sicily attacked Hieron as well as the Carthaginians. His mission was to defend Messana against the enemies of the Mamertines. The idea that he intended to conquer Sicily and clear the island of Punic forces is preposterous. The aim was to restore the balance of power in the region. In the event, the Mamertines managed on their own to expel the Carthaginian garrison from Messana; back home, the Carthaginian commander was crucified pour encourager les autres. The Romans found it difficult to make headway across the Straits of Messina while there were substantial Carthaginian fleets in the Lipari islands, and the Roman general had no experience of the stormy waters between Italy and Sicily; so, not surprisingly, direct Roman help to the Mamertines was spasmodic. When it did arrive, it only forced Hieron of Syracuse and Carthage into an unholy alliance. The Romans were hampered by a severe lack of ships. Their commander Appius Claudius turned to Taras, Velia, Naples and other Greek cities for a fleet, made up of triremes and fifty-oared pentekonters.35 The Carthaginians are said to have thrashed the Roman fleet, after which they sent a haughty message to Rome: come to terms or else you will not even be able to wash your hands in the sea.36 Even so, Carthage was hoping for peace.

  The Romans were too proud to pay attention, and by 263–262 they had at least 40,000 men under arms in Si
cily. Hieron of Syracuse was impressed and decided to back the likely winner, switching sides from Carthage to Rome (for which he would eventually be handsomely rewarded). Even more significantly, the Romans had worked out how to transport large numbers of men by sea, not that all were Romans or Latins – many were confederate allies from Italy, while the Carthaginians encamped large numbers of Iberian, Gallic and Ligurian mercenaries at Akragas.37 Rome prevailed, sacked the city, sold its 25,000 inhabitants into slavery, and embarked on what now seemed a realistic plan to remove the Carthaginians from Sicily.38 Yet this is not to say that Rome saw itself as master of a colonial Sicily. Its ambitions were more modest. Rome would have been happy with guaranteed access to Sicilian grain, as its population grew prodigiously. Much as Roman optimates might, in later generations, scorn a life of commerce, there were sound commercial reasons for pursuing this war, once it began to look as if it could actually be won.39

  Rome needed a proper war fleet. Polybios stated that it was only now that the Romans began to build a fleet of their own.40 There was an important shift away from heavy reliance on ships provided by Greek allies or Etruscan clients, towards a war fleet much vaster than the ten or dozen vessels maintained by the ‘two naval men’. How this was achieved is an even greater mystery than in the Spartan case. Sparta could draw on the expertise of neighbouring Greek cities, several of which were within its sphere of control. Now, in 261 or 260, it was resolved that Rome should construct 100 quinquiremes and twenty triremes. The Romans had captured a Carthaginian quinquireme and used it as a model.41 How the Romans manned the fleet they built, how they acquired the essential navigational skills that would enable the vessels to be steered through the treacherous waters of the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas, how they managed to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of beams and shaped timbers, how, indeed, they managed to achieve this in sixty days from the cutting of the timber (as the Elder Pliny would later assert), is a mystery – the use of such fresh, unweathered wood would have generated hideous problems as it dried out and shrank. Polybios credibly remarked that the ships were ‘poorly constructed and hard to move’.42 Pitch and rigging had to be obtained or manufactured. Roman crews are said to have trained intensively on land, learning their oarsmanship in dry conditions before daring to set out on the sea. Evidence that adds plausibility to the story of the rapid building of the fleet is the discovery of the remains of a Carthaginian warship whose timbers bore letters of the Punic alphabet (which also functioned as numbers), so it seems that in Carthage ships were assembled by numbers. Whether the Roman assembly lines were at Ostia or in the Greek cities of southern Italy is unknown, but this was an enormously expensive operation. After its initial doubts, Rome had committed itself fully to the war with Carthage; and yet the Romans were still unclear about their objectives. Fighting the war had become a matter of honour.

  How efficient this fleet was is also an open question. The first attempt to use it, at Lipari, was a disaster; the Roman commander was blockaded within the harbour of Lipari, and his crew were so alarmed that they ran away. Still, this was soon followed by a success in the same waters, at Mylai, enhanced by the invention of a short-lived but famous grappling device known as the korax or ‘crow’. This device contained a raisable ramp that could swing in different directions, compensating for the lack of manoeuvrability of Roman ships; under the ramp was a heavy pointed spike made of iron, which would not merely grip an enemy ship but slice into its deck.43 The aim was to enable Roman marines to board Carthaginian ships and do there what they did best, hand-to-hand fighting. The Romans still mistrusted the sea, and sought to transform sea battles conducted by ships with rams into ersatz land battles in which the boats provided platforms for men-at-arms. The fleets each side launched became bigger and deadlier year by year. Polybios says that at the great sea battle of Eknomos in western Sicily, in 256, 230 Roman ships faced about 350 (more probably 200) Carthaginian vessels and 150,000 men; it was ‘possibly the biggest naval battle in history’.44 Later in the war, at a crucial battle fought off the Egadian islands west of Sicily in 241, numbers were only a little smaller, indicating that, amid the awful destruction wreaked by battle and by storms, and the natural deterioration of ships kept too long at sea, the shipyards were working at full stretch to replace what had been lost. The figures of hundreds of ships are certainly very impressive, unmatched in later centuries, and yet the constant confusion about the figures among the classical authors suggests how easy it was for numbers to become inflated. Modern historians too have been seduced by figures that make sense only if they are totals for all vessels, not just the sleek triremes and quinquiremes – adding in the transport ships carrying marines, horses and, crucially, supplies, for the warships could not last more than a couple of days without fresh water and generous food supplies (further quantities of which were generally available from studiously neutral merchants who parked themselves on shore within sight of a battle, in the hope of quick profits).

  Thanks in significant measure to the korax the battle of Eknomos was a great Roman triumph. The Roman fleet also learned very quickly how to form for battle in closely packed squadrons; the difficulty they then faced was that of holding the line together in the heat of battle. These formations were surely intended to follow the pattern of the Roman battle formations regularly employed on land. They gave the Romans an advantage over the more thinly spread Carthaginian navy, for what the Punic admirals counted on was the ease with which their ships could be manoeuvred and give chase. They had the advantage of speed and they preferred to descend rapidly on the side or even stern of enemy shipping, ramming and sinking their foes; at Eknomos the Punic fleet probably intended to surround the Roman fleet and to stab lethally at its sides and rear.45 In other words, the battle of Eknomos is important in the history of naval strategy not simply because of the number of ships and sailors; it is also an intriguing example of a clash between navies with very different conceptions of how to fight a battle at sea.46

  Victory at Eknomos opened the Sicilian Straits to the Roman fleet and gave Rome access to Africa. The great plan was now to invade the heartlands of the Carthaginian empire. But in attacking Carthage the Romans did not assume that they would capture the city, let alone destroy it. In 256 a Roman fleet landed more than 15,000 men at Aspis, a little to the east of Carthage, and raided the farms and townlets nearby, reportedly taking 20,000 slaves, though many were captive Romans and Italians who could now be released. But the Romans were unable to hold their position in Africa, and sailed away dejected in July 255, taking at least 364 ships back to Sicily.47 Here inexperience with the seas brought the Romans a disaster far greater than anything the Carthaginian navy could have inflicted. The Roman commanders overruled their steersmen, evidently not Roman, who insisted that it was unsafe to sail close to the Sicilian shore at a time of the year famous for its sudden and violent storms. But the Romans wanted to show the flag and intimidate the towns along the south coast of Sicily into submission. Heavy storms swept water over the gunwales of the low-slung vessels and sank all but eighty of this great fleet, and up to 100,000 men drowned, maybe 15 per cent of Italy’s manpower: ‘a greater disaster than this has never been recorded as happening at sea at one time’, according to Polybios.48

  The final act of the war was the naval battle off the Egadian islands, west of Sicily, in 241 BC, in which the Roman navy, now rebuilt, sank or captured about 120 Carthaginian ships; Carthage realized it had to come to terms. Rome imposed heavy penalties, without suggesting that Carthage had no right to exist. The defeated city was required to pay an indemnity of eighty tons of silver (3,200 talents), spread over a period of ten years and, more importantly, Carthage had to renounce its interests in Sicily and Sicily’s offshore islands. Carthage promised not to send warships into Italian waters, nor to attack Hieron of Syracuse, the turncoat who was now a firm ally of Rome.49 Indeed, the main beneficiary was Hieron, who was entrusted by the Romans with the day-to-day supervision of Sicilian affairs. Rome had no app
etite for extending direct dominion over Sicily. The aims of the war had developed slowly, but even at the end Rome foresaw no more than the neutralization of Carthage. Its merchant fleet could continue to ply the Mediterranean; indeed, it would have to do so if the vast sums in silver due to Rome were ever to be paid.

  V

  It has been necessary to dwell on the First Punic War because that conflict marks the moment when a Roman fleet emerged. The Second Punic War, ancient historians agreed, was a natural consequence of the First. Following its defeat, Carthage found itself under increasing pressure from Numidian rulers in the North African hinterland, and it also faced a serious mutiny among its mercenary army based in Sardinia. The mercenaries killed the Carthaginian commander as well as all the Carthaginians they could find on the island, and when new troops were sent to Sardinia to suppress the revolt, they joined the mutiny as well. In due course, though, the mercenaries were expelled, arrived in Etruria, and appealed to Rome for help, which the Senate was inclined to offer. The Romans were irritated that Carthage had arrested 500 Italian merchants who had been surreptitiously supplying the mutineers. Carthage would have preferred to restore its authority over the parts of Sardinia it had ruled, but, in the face of Roman determination, the Carthaginians buckled, and in 238 they offered the Romans not merely 1,200 talents of silver but Sardinia itself.50 Rome had therefore rapidly established its claim to the two largest islands in the Mediterranean, and had acquired Sardinia merely through threats. Carthage was too exhausted to argue. Whether Rome could activate a claim to any more than a few harbours and coastal stations frequented by Punic merchants is doubtful. Sardinia was unconquerable, with its thousands of communities gathered under independent warlords around the nuraghi. The Sards were no more cooperative towards the Romans than towards the Carthaginians; Rome had to wait until 177 BC before it secured a major victory over the Sards.51 Rome was mainly interested in Sardinia’s strategic position, which would guarantee control of Tyrrhenian waters; it was not the island they craved, but its coastline with secure harbours free from pirates and Punic warships, from which their fleet could be supplied. Thus Rome had begun to develop a Mediterranean strategy consciously based on the principle of controlling the seas.